In his 1986 book Evolutionary Biology, Douglas Futuyma maintained that natural selection was an evolutionary mechanism. The example Futuyma’s book cited was that of the color of a moth population turning darker in Britain during the Industrial Revolution—one of the best known such examples. (See Industrial-Revolution moths, the.) However, he admitted, “Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed, or they did not. If not, then they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.”188

In addition, Futuyma—one of the best-known exponents of the theory of evolution in our time—indicates the true reason for the importance of the theory: “Together with Marx’s materialist theory of hist ory and society. . . Darwin hewed the final planks of the platform of mechanism and materialism.”189